First published at 14:25 UTC on November 22nd, 2023.
(Ad-FREE-Vid-Weapon X CUT) On a sunny morning in the year 642 (ROMAN TIME), armies of Muslim Arabs, in the process of conquering Egypt, destroyed the ancient library at Alexandria, which for a thousand years had been the western world’s most importa…
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(Ad-FREE-Vid-Weapon X CUT) On a sunny morning in the year 642 (ROMAN TIME), armies of Muslim Arabs, in the process of conquering Egypt, destroyed the ancient library at Alexandria, which for a thousand years had been the western world’s most important center of learning. The library held a million volumes, including an extensive collection of Greek and Roman literature, as well as works of science, philosophy, religion and law. The Alexandria Library was nothing less than the summit of ancient scholarship. Its archives and museum were filled with the intellectual riches of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, Rome and Egypt, and its research center was visited by many generations of scholars seeking to stimulate their minds and keep alive memories of the past. The opening episode of Carl Sagan’s TV series Cosmos, first shown in 1980, lamented the most famous burning of books in history—the conflagration that destroyed the Library of Alexandria. “If I could travel back into time,” Sagan told his viewers, it would be to the Library of Alexandria, because “all the knowledge in the ancient world was within those marble walls.” The destruction of the library was, he said, a warning to us 1,600 years later: “we must never let it happen again.”
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